Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

I was browsing Amazon shopping for a random item when I came across the following advertisements promotion Internet Explorer 8 as the “optimized for Amazon” way to “click, shop, and browse.” Check out the following ads, which showed up for me when I was using the Chrome browser:

While Amazon no doubt has the right to promote whatever browser it prefers, allying itself with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is the worst choice. Google Chrome is on the up-and-up, innovating a new faster web browsing experience, and capturing market share from Microsoft and Firefox. While Microsoft might be able to pay cash for coveted ads on Amazon’s massive web properties, Amazon, a company founded on Open Source software should be supporting and nurturing other open source technologies. Webkit might be the next renderer in it’s third-generation colour Kindle tablets–a technology that Google has heavily contributed to through its Chrome project. In the long run, Amazon would be better served promoting the open source software that powers its commercial success.

So I recently restarted my computer to find a new version of Google Chrome which has a pathetic “New Tab” page. Where the old one gave me a ton of recently viewed thumbnail icons (12, I think), the new only has 8! And they pathetically take up a mere fraction of the available real-estate on the monitor. If you don’t believe me, check out this screenshot of the feature-crippled Chrome 3 in action:

I’m not the only one to notice, there are a couple support threads on the Google Chrome Forums about this. More, sure to come.

TechCrunch just released new photos and specs of their internet Tablet prototype B, which for $299 features a 12″ 1024×768 touchscreen, Via Nano processor, 1GB of RAM, 4GB flash drive, wifi, accelerometer, camera, four cell battery, and Ubuntu with a custom WebKit browser. Arrington says the 12.5″ x 9.7″ x 1.3″ device weighs three pounds.

What TechCrunch is trying to do is create a 4x larger version of the iPhone centered around the browsing experience. To do this they need three things: a good price point, intuitive user interface, and beautiful industrial design. They’ve made good progress, but they are clearly not there yet; $299 is extremely close to the full-featured HP 2133-KX869AT 8.9-inch Mini-Note PC (C7-M 1.2 GHz Processor, 1 GB RAM, 120 GB Hard Drive, Linux) for $350. Consumers would probably rather buy a netbook–miniature notebook–than a browser-tablet at the $300 price point.

To improve their price, the TechCrunch team needs to throw away all components adding cost–the external ports, the webcam, and anything else that gets in the way. They’ll have to aggressively negotiate manufacturing contracts. But, if they can hit their original $200 target, they’ll have a winner.

The next ingredient is the killer UI. That’s what made the iPhone into an overnight hit, something Gizmodo reader KVirtanen noted:

Simply think through everything. Make it look and work like it’s worth over 300$ and people will be all over it. Listen to your potential customers when making decisions. Make it so that it almost slips on to your hands and your fingers just automatically finds the on-screen buttons (and maybe also some physical ones). Let people with good eye comment on the design.

This way it’ll be a long-lasting tool, not something you’ll end up replacing after you get fed up with the way it works or after it breaks.

Finally, the design of the case in prototype B sucks. It’s thick and unwieldy. Mike says that “It’s about twice as thick as is needs to be without further engineering – we just built in a safety thickness in case of heat or other issues.” Getting it down to .7″ thick and removing much of the unnecessary border around the screen will go a long way to making it consumer friendly. From the screens, it also looks like the bezel rides quite a bit higher than the screen surface. The iPhone face is one smooth surface, something that make it feel like a quality product a person would want to own.

If prototype C can be profitable at $200, throws away all the components not central to the TC Tablet’s mission, has a great user interface, and looks 100000x sexier than prototype B, I’ll be willing to revisit this headline. Otherwise, competing with the netbooks, it’s doomed.

Update: Sad to hear that due to an intellectual property dispute with their partners, the CrunchPad is dead. I was looking forward to seeing it compete in the marketplace, and die a more noble death.